Is there any doubt that Newt Gingrich...

...is appealing to the worst instincts of white voters in South Carolina? Shortly after his now famous exchange with Juan Williams in the Fox News debate a woman said to him, "I would like to thank you, Mr. Speaker, for putting Mr. Juan Williams in his place the other night."

Putting him in his place? What year is this?

Not convinced? Read Charles Blow's column in the Times today (my emphasis):

In September 2010, [Newt Gingrich] told the National Review Online that President Obama followed a “Kenyan, anti-colonial” worldview. Gingrich continued, “I think he worked very hard at being a person who is normal, reasonable, moderate, bipartisan, transparent, accommodating — none of which was true.”

Gingrich was commenting on a Forbes article by Dinesh D’Souza, the president of the King’s College in New York City. In the article, D’Souza said of President Obama:

“Our president is trapped in his father’s time machine. Incredibly, the U.S. is being ruled according to the dreams of a Luo tribesman of the 1950s. This philandering, inebriated African socialist, who raged against the world for denying him the realization of his anti-colonial ambitions, is now setting the nation’s agenda through the reincarnation of his dreams in his son.”

Gingrich called the article the “most profound insight I have read in the last six years about Barack Obama.”